


Ghost of a Memory

by galactic-pirates (stillsearching47)



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 09:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15861018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillsearching47/pseuds/galactic-pirates
Summary: Two men had died when he had pulled that trigger. He had shot his own heart, torpedoed his last chance of happiness and this was his penance.





	Ghost of a Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by _@ripperblackstaff_ "ghost/living person au"

_“It’s the only way.”_

They’d been rampaging through history, mucking around years, or decades or even centuries before they were born. Chaos theory, the butterfly effect, had hit during the first mission and Lucy had lost her sister. Amy Preston had been wiped from existence.

_“No! I can’t, I won’t!”_

The horizon was starting to lighten. It would soon be the dawn of a brand new day. Garcia Flynn stood at the cliffs edge; with his all black ensemble, the collar of his coat turned up as protection against the sea breeze, he was practically invisible in the darkness. That was as it should be because the darkness was his natural home, it was where he belonged and it was where he would stay. He was nothing but a spectre amongst the living.

_“It’s ok.”  
“Nothing about this is ok.”_

He’d lost his family to Rittenhouse and wallowed in despair until Lucy Preston had handed him a journal, a blueprint to changing the past. He had dedicated himself to destroying Rittenhouse before it began. There were so many moves, so many trips, it was subtle and slow and he had never questioned why. He had assumed that they didn’t have enough information and so he had interrogated the Rittenhouse agents he found.

Even after Lucy’s grandfather had provided them with information to supposedly destroy Rittenhouse in the present. Even after Lucy’s mother was revealed to be Rittenhouse. Not even after her great-grandfather Nicholas was pulled from the past to lead the not-so-destroyed-or-weakened Rittenhouse. He hadn’t seen it. None of them had seen it. He’d had all the pieces but he’d been blind, perhaps wilfully so because there were worse things than death.

_“I’ll kiss them both, hold them close and then leave.”_

There were stains on his soul that would never be clean. He wanted his family to live but he’d known all along that they he couldn’t live with them. There was no way he could pretend the past few years hadn’t happened. He would forever have the memory of their deaths and they deserved a good life, not one burdened with his torment.

He had told Lucy once that they had both lost their families to Rittenhouse but that wasn’t true. His family had died but friends and family had mourned them. There were photos, and drawings, and clay handprints that said they had been real, that they had been here and that they mattered.

Amy Preston only survived in Lucy’s memories. Nobody mourned her, she had never walked _this_ Earth, there was no sign that she had been here because she never had been _here_.

_“We have to break the cycle. We’re stuck in a loop and there’s only one way to end it.”  
“I don’t accept that. I can’t. Lucy, please…”_

The sky turned pink and Flynn turned. It was time to go. Time for this to end. He started walking, retracing his footsteps, back to the canyon, back to the death of hope. Losing Lorena had made him a widower but there was no word for a man who had lost his daughter. Nobody should ever have to bury a child.

He’d been a ghost haunting the world. Lucy had brought him to life, she had given him bitter understanding. They had been two broken people who had found a home and hope in one another. The wound that Iris had left would never heal but he had thought, if only for a moment, that maybe, just maybe, his life didn’t have to end.

As the sun broke free of the Earth and rose behind him Flynn stared down into the depths of the abyss. The light of dawn illuminating the wreckage of the two time machines. The mothership and the lifeboat were in pieces, unrecognisable lumps of twisted metal. They would never be used again. Anybody that found the remains wouldn’t even know what they had been.

_“If I go back and give you that journal then this starts all over again. If you go back, one bullet can save the world. Rittenhouse will never exist.”  
“You will never exist!”_

Flynn pulled his gun. Death was easy, it was living that was hard. He threw the gun down into the canyon, it landed in the dirt between the two machines, relics from another world, a world which only he remembered. Lucy had chosen to sacrifice and he had respected that decision. Two men had died when he had pulled that trigger. He had shot his own heart, torpedoed his last chance of happiness and this was his penance. His family lived but Lucy was gone.

She was nothing more than a ghost of a memory. A ghost of what could have been, the ghost of what had never been.

There really were worse things than death.


End file.
